I was steered to A J Rich's The Hand that Feeds You by a pair of websites that listed books set in Brooklyn, but I'm sad to say that there's almost nothing of Brooklyn in the novel — a considerable disappointment to expectant me. It's a murder mystery in which various places in and around Brooklyn are mentioned, but in fact the novel takes place in a cliched fictional city in which murders are committed, red herrings are liberally strewn, police are not very bright, and the actual perp is lo and behold revealed in the last chapter.
I'm not a great reader of crime fiction, but I found this one "suspenseful" and "gripping." Against my better judgment, I swallowed it in one gulp.
I would have liked it even more if I had any affection or even interest in dogs, because in The Hand that Feeds You, the mystery is whether it was Morgan Prager's or Billie Badgirl-Richbitch's dogs who ripped out scamming boyfriend Bennett's throat. The novel might also have been more up my alley if protagonist-narrator Prager had been able to form warmer bonds with humans than with canines. The novel concludes with Prager receiving a chaste peck from her human crush and a sensual roll in the grass with her devoted doggy. Borderline perverse, in my opinion. But what can be expected of a novel in which dangerous "pitbulls" are re-branded as "pitties."
It's odd and something of a curiosity that scenes in the novel are located in Rangeley and Oquossoc, the only towns in rural Maine with which I'm even remotely familiar.
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